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This is How You Lose Her (Without Even Realizing It)

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You lose her when you don’t choose her.

When you make her feel like an option, when you put her second, third, and fourth. You lose her when you put her away, at a casual distance. When you don’t commit, like when you can’t decide on a TV channel because you think a better show is playing on the next one.

You lose her when you leave her stranded, day in and day out. When she feels like she can’t depend on you because you never take her side in anything. When she feels like she’s playing on her own team, a team of one, while you’re supposed to be playing on the same team, a team of two.

You lose her when you don’t give her all of you.

You lose her when she has to search for all the parts that make you who you are. You lose her when you pop in after you’ve let her down for the hundredth time, only to remind her you’re still sort of there, when you feel like it, that is.

When she tries to love you for all your roughness, but you crawl back into your shell. When she wants to dry your tears, and hold you at night, but you simply turn the other way. You lose her when you refuse to be present, when you don’t let her into the corners of your mind. Because all she wants is the fusion of your souls, to feel the power of love when your hands are intertwined.

You lose her when you don’t try to understand her.

When you don’t bother to look at the world from her point of view, when you fight her back on every word she says, even when she’s trying her hardest to reach a compromise. 

You drive her further and further away when you laugh at her fears, when you make her feel like she’s crazy for feeling what she feels, and when you’re completely disengaged from the discussion. You let her fall when you treat her like an inferior, because she thought she saw you as equals. 

But this… This is how you keep her.

You keep her in your life by listening to her. By recognizing when she’s being vulnerable with you, and letting her fall into you, instead of turning the other way.

You keep her through communication, by recognizing that it’s a two-way street and that sometimes she keeps things to herself because you simply didn’t ask. 

You keep her when you support her, when she feels comfortable leaning on you, day in and day out, when she can cuddle up close to you at 3 in the morning and feel safe from all the evils in the world.

You keep her when you give yourself fully.

When you don’t leave her stranded or hanging off a cliff, when you tell her you’re sorry and you mean it, and when you talk about your greatest fears and most ambitious hopes. When you don’t put up barriers as she dries your tears and calms your fears.

You keep her when you choose her.

When you demonstrate your love and devotion, in the little ways that have nothing to do with the words “I love you.” When you show her that she’s your first choice, and not an option, every day and night that you guys are together.

When she’s the first hand you grab in the darkness, when you take her side, and show her that you are in fact playing on the same team, your team of two.

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